Arkansas judge rules Clinton in contempt of court

Tuesday 13 April 1999 04.37 EDT
First published on Tuesday 13 April 1999 04.37 EDT

President Clinton and his long-time adversary, the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, suffered serious but separate setbacks from courts in the president's home state of Arkansas yesterday.

In a reminder to the president that the problems arising from his relationship with Monica Lewinsky are not yet over, the judge in the sexual harassment lawsuit lodged against Mr Clinton by an Arkansas woman, Paula Jones, ruled that the president was in contempt of court.

The judge said he had wilfully failed to obey repeated orders to testify truthfully in his taped deposition for the Jones case in January last year.

The judge, Susan Webber Wright, ordered Mr Clinton to pay Mrs Jones's legal fees and "any reasonable expenses" for the deposition hearing, which took place in Washington. He was also ordered to pay the judge's costs of $1,202 (£750) to attend and preside over the deposition.

The judge also reported Mr Clinton to the Arkansas supreme court's committee on professional misconduct to review any disciplinary action it thinks appropriate. Mr Clinton is a lawyer and a former Arkansas attorney-general.

The judge said she would not have changed her decision to dismiss the Jones case in April last year even if Mr Clinton "had been truthful".

Mrs Jones appealed against the dismissal of the case, but the suit ended with an out-of-court settlement earlier this year, in which Mr Clinton agreed to pay her $850,000.

"Simply put, the president's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms Lewinsky was intentionally false and his statements regarding whether he ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false," the judge said in the ruling, released yesterday.

Meanwhile, the independent counsel Kenneth Starr suffered his own humiliating judicial blow when a jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, threw out his latest attempt to have a friend of the Clintons, Susan McDougal, jailed for refusing to testify to the independent counsel's investigators.

The jury found Mrs McDougal not guilty on the main charge of obstruction of justice and failed to reach a verdict on the two subsidiary charges of criminal contempt of court brought by Mr Starr.

Mrs McDougal, who has been in Mr Starr's sights for six years, walked from court yesterday a free woman.

"I had a fair trial and my day in court and I thank you for that," Mrs McDougal told Judge George Howard after he declared a formal mistrial on the two hung verdicts.

Mrs McDougal was charged with the three counts after she refused to testify against the Clintons to Mr Starr's grand juries in 1996 and 1998, during his investigation into the Clintons' involvement in an Arkansas property development called Whitewater. She had faced fines of up to $75,000 and a prison term if convicted.

After an earlier contempt ruling arising from the same refusal to testify, Mrs McDougal was given an 18-month prison sentence.

After yesterday's reverse, Mr Starr's office said immediately that it was considering whether to bring yet another indictment against Mrs McDougal on the two contempt of court charges. A retrial was "obviously an option", prosecutor Mark Barrett said. Most legal observers think such a decision is almost inconceivable.

"I'll stand up to them as long as I have to," Mrs McDougal said outside the court. Describing herself as both happy and stunned, she said it felt strange to realise she was no longer facing indictment, at least for the moment.

"It's been a long time. I've been indicted since 1993," she said.

At her side, her flamboyant lawyer Mark Geragos kept up the high level of quotable vituperation that has characterised the four-week-long trial, telling Mr Starr to "get the heck out of Arkansas and do it now".

"If anything could put a stake through the heart of Kenneth Starr, this should be it," he told reporters. "This guy should pack up, should get out of here."

Mr Starr was not in court and made no comment. There have been reports that he is again looking for a way to leave a job that has made him a byword for unbending puritanical drive over his pursuit of Mr Clinton, who was acquitted on impeachment charges in February.

Mrs McDougal and her late husband, Jim McDougal, were partners with the Clintons in the failed Arkansas land development in the 1970s. This was the original focus of Mr Starr's investigations in 1994.

The McDougals were also owners of a savings and loan company that collapsed with debts of $60 million. Jim McDougal died in prison of cancer last year after being convicted on 18 fraud counts two years earlier.

The case that was thrown out yesterday arises from Mrs McDougal's consistent refusal to agree under oath to Mr Starr's claim that Mr Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, pressured state employees to authorise an improper loan to help to pay off his Whitewater debts.

Mr Clinton testified in 1996 that he knew nothing about the $300,000 loan. "They wanted her to lie," Mr Geragos said during the trial. "She wouldn't do it, and she's innocent."

Throughout the trial, Mr Geragos took the fight to Mr Starr, accusing him at one point of using "terrorising tactics" against his client.

The most dramatic moment in the trial came when he persuaded the judge to allow evidence in court from Julie Hiatt Steele, a Virginian woman who is being prosecuted separately by Mr Starr for contempt and obstruction.

She has refused to give evidence supporting the allegation by the White House volunteer Kathleen Willey that she was sexually assaulted by the president in the White House in 1993.